Song of the Day 3/7: The Beatles, “Doctor Robert”
Dr. Feelgood the Candy Man, better known as former White House doctor Ronny Jackson, has been demoted by the Navy from retired admiral to retired captain for running a pill mill out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. during the Trump administration. The Pentagon inspector general found he drank and took drugs while on duty and created a hostile work environment. Well, it wasn’t so hostile for all those aides who were pounding down Xanax and Provigil, prescription or not.
This will hit him fairly hard in the pension check, but Jackson done got hisself elected to the Yew-nited States Congress, so he ain’t doin’ too bad. Hey, remember when he gave Trump glowing physicals, and said he weighed 239 pounds? And stood 6’3″? Yeah, the day-drinking might explain that. And to be honest, who can blame him for it? Might be the only way people could bear working for Trump.
To be fair, Dr. Ronny is hardly the first presidential drug dispenser. The original “Dr. Feelgood” was a guy named Max Jacobson, who gave John F. Kennedy (and lots of celebrities) “vitamin shots” that were laced with amphetamines. He wasn’t the official White House physician, though – they chased Jacobson off, and soon after he was exposed. The doctor John Lennon wrote about, Robert Freymann, administered the same kind of miracle cure to a circle of well-off New Yorkers. Both those guys were stripped of their medical licenses.
Lennon’s 1966 tune wasn’t the first to address the pill-popping craziness of the ’60s, but like the Stones’ “Mother’s Little Helper,” they usually took a cautionary tone. Lennon might have been the first to treat the issue satirically, with some help from McCartney on the bridge. The song was recorded with the rest of the “Revolver” LP, but appeared in North America on “Yesterday and Today,” remembered in the U.S. for its infamous “butcher” cover.
